[ISN] Workers, Technology Need to Team Up to Fight Insiders

http://www.darkreading.com/insider-threat/167801100/security/security-management/232300456/workers-technology-need-to-team-up-to-fight-insiders.html

By Robert Lemos
Contributing Editor
Dark Reading
Dec 13, 2011

In September, U.S. prosecutors indicted 48-year-old Chunlai Yang, a 
naturalized Chinese-American citizen, on charges of stealing software 
code and other trade secrets from his employer, trading-software firm 
CME Group. U.S. authorities arrested Yang a few days before he allegedly 
planned to leave the United States and form a company based on the 
stolen technology.

The incident (pdf)demonstrates many of the attributes of an insider 
attack. Almost two-thirds of employees that commit insider theft have 
already accepted a position at another company or are planning to start 
their own firm, according to a survey of recent insider cases released 
last week by security firm Symantec. In addition, insiders tend to steal 
data that they work with every day and to which they have some feeling 
of entitlement, with three quarters of incidents involving data to which 
the insider had access.

"The entitled disgruntled thief has a belief that they own the data, 
even though the company is paying them," says Harley V. Stock, a 
forensic psychologist and a co-author of the report. "They have a 
perception of injustice that the company has not been treating them 
well."

In 2010, the leak of a large cache of diplomatic memos from the U.S. 
Department of State through Wikileaks captured the attention of 
governments and companies, and shined a light on the problems of insider 
attacks. Now, studies of the issue may suggest better ways of tackling 
the prevention of insider theft and attacks.

[...]


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